Edith Nesbit’s
Five Children and It about five English children and their
wish-granting Psammead never engaged me as a child, nor did her sequels:
The Phoenix and
the Carpet (1904), and finally
The Amulet, which was the only one with time
travel. In that third story, the eponymous magic amulet takes them to times that span from
ancient Egypt to the future. It was only the amulet that had the power of time travel, and
even if I never bonded much with Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and the baby, I do admire
Nesbit for bringing time travel to children’s stories.
The story was initially serialized
as The Amulet in twelve monthly issues of The Strand before the book was
published in 1906 as The Story of the Amulet. Decades later, the children show up in a
cameo in the fourth book of Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic series.
— Michael Main
Don’t you understand? The thing existed in the Past. If you were in the Past, too, you
could find it. It’s very difficult to make you understand things. Time and space are
only forms of thought.